Last week I was totally whipped by a case of bronchitis. And even though I am still barking like a dog, today is the first day in eight that I feel better. I hope your virus protection is up-to-date, because what I had was nasty!

(Okay.. that was a bit of nerd humor. … not very funny, I know … but I mean well! ) Hope yours was better than mine.

Did you participate in any of our recent polls? Here’s a roundup of recent results:

Alexander Graham Bell was born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. March is also the anniversary of his most famous invention: the telephone. In 1875, after receiving a patent for the transmission of multiple telegraph signals on a single wire, Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson, set out to invent the telephone. Success came on March 10, 1876.

American Experience: The Telephone: More About Bellhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/telephone/peopleevents/mabell.html This PBS site tells the amazing story of Bell’s prodigious talents and the empire he created. At the age of fourteen, Bell “was mesmerized by a demonstration of Sir Charles Wheatstone’s speaking machine” he saw in London. Upon their return to Edinburgh, Bell and his older brother successfully created a model of their own: a facsimile mouth, throat, nose, maneuverable tongue, and bellow lungs that produced human-like sounds.

AT&T History: Inventing the Telephonehttp://www.corp.att.com/history/inventing.html >From the corporate annals of AT&T, this page offers a brief biography of Bell and a short history of his famous invention. After the patent filing of February 14, 1876, Bell returned to his labs in Boston and continued his work on the telephone. The next summer, Bell and his backers created the Bell Telephone Company (the predecessor of today’s AT&T.) The very first customers were typically businessmen who wanted a phone line to connect their home and their office.

CBC.com: Ten Greatest Canadians: Alexander Graham Bellhttp://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/bell-alexander-graham.html Nominated in 2004 as one of Canada’s favorite sons, Bell moved to Canada at the age of twenty- three, then to Boston a few years later. This page tells Bell’s story, with emphasis on the time he spent in Canada. After creating the Bell Telephone Company, Bell built a summer home called Beinn Bhreagh in Nova Scotia, because the landscape reminded him of his childhood in Scotland. “Free from financial constraints, he devoted the remainder of his life to inventing, and many of his most inspired creations were developed at Beinn Bhreagh.”

This was a great Valentine’s issue! Everything was great! It would have been of much greater help to have had this issue 7-10 days earlier! Maybe next year! Bee

Yes, Bee. I got the idea rather late for that issue, and I ended up just squeezing it on the fourteenth! But many readers wrote me to let me know that I should have been a little bit earlier on that one. Barbara

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No time to workout? No problem! Introducing the amazing new workout program that’s the laziest way to get in shape – works almost any place, anytime, anywhere…even while watching TV!http://www.fit-and-sit.com

Online games turn ordinary school assignments into interactive fun. Show your kids how to author word searches, jigsaws and crossword puzzles. http://www.how2add.com